One of the great features of the IBM Knowledge Center is that you can create PDF versions of any documentation you want. First you create a collection of topics that you want to be in the PDF.

To create a PDF from the Knowledge Center:

1. Sign in to the Knowledge Center with your IBM ID. The Sign In button is in the upper right corner of the black title bar.

2. In the navigation pane, click the topic that you want to add to a collection. The subtopics are also added to the collection, but you can edit the collection to remove the topics that you don't want.

3. Choose an option from the Add to collection menu, in the upper right above the topic:

4. If you chose a new collection, enter a name. Otherwise, choose an existing collection name.

5. Click My Collections at the bottom of the navigation pane to see your collections.

6. Select the collection in the navigation pane and click Create PDF File. Note: Only the first 1000 topics are included in the PDF.

The PDF is created. You have about an hour to download it before it disappears.

Starting with IBM® Informix® 12.10.xC4, you can allocate space efficiently when you import tables that have large rows by setting a default extent size of 16 KB. Include the new -D option of the dbimportutility to specify a default extent size of 16 KB. Extent sizes that you specify in the CREATE TABLE statement override the -D option. The -D option is useful especially when you import huge tables that contain large LVARCHAR columns.

Informix 12.10.xC4 has some very exciting new features for JSON compatibility:

Support for CORS requests in the REST API (12.10.xC4W1)

You can now set up cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) with the REST API. To do so, set the following optional parameters that were added to the jsonListener.properties file:

listener.http.accessControlAllowCredentials

listener.http.accessControlAllowHeaders

listener.http.accessControlAllowMethods

listener.http.accessControlAllowOrigin

listener.http.accessControlExposeHeaders

listener.http.accessControlMaxAge

Use these parameters to configure the HTTP headers of all responses. The HTTP headers provide access to JSON fields that are required by synchronous JavaScript + XML (AJAX) applications in a web browser when these applications access the REST listener.

MongoDB compatibility

Informix now supports the following MongoDB 2.4 features:

Cursor support so that you can query large volumes of data.

Text search of string content in collections and tables.

Geospatial indexes and queries.

Pipeline aggregation operators.

The array update modifiers: $each, $slice, $sort.

You can perform the following new tasks that extend MongoDB functionality in your JSON application:

Import and export data directly with the wire listener by using the Informix JSON commands exportCollection and importCollection.

Configure a strategy for calculating the size of your database by using the Informix extension to the MongoDB listDatabases command: sizeStrategy option or command.listDatabases.sizeStrategy property.

You can customize the behavior of the wire listener by setting new properties. For example, you can control logging, caching, timeout, memory pools, and the maximum size of documents.

Access Informix from REST API clients

You can now directly connect applications or devices that communicate through the REST API to Informix. You create connections by configuring the wire listener for the REST API. With the REST API, you can use MongoDB and SQL queries against JSON and BSON document collections, traditional relational tables, and time series data. The REST API uses MongoDB syntax and returns JSON documents.

Create a time series with the REST API or the MongoDB API

If you have applications that handle time series data, you can now create and manage a time series with the REST API or the MongoDB API. Previously, you created a time series by running SQL statements. For example, you can program sensor devices that do not have client drivers to load time series data directly into the database with HTTP commands from the REST API.

You create time series objects by adding definitions to time series collections. You interact with time series data through a virtual table.

Starting with version 12.10.xC4, you can resolve in-place alter operations by running the admin( ) or task( ) SQL administration command with thetable update_ipa or fragment update_ipa argument. You can include the paralleloption to run the operation in parallel. For example, the following statement removes in-place alter operations in parallel from a table that is named auto:

If you're installing Informix server in a Unicode environment, check out the tips that we added about setting the GL_USEGLU environment variable. You’ll learn:

How to set GL_USEGLU to prevent server and collation problems

What happens in certain situations if you don’t set GL_USEGLU

How to check what locale is used for the server startup environment

How to determine whether a database is a Unicode database

How to determine the exact locale of a database

Examples are provided to show the steps that you must use to create a Unicode database. And, just in case something doesn’t go as expected, we added some troubleshooting tips for errors that you might encounter.

There's actually more Informix information on the ibm.com site than just the Knowledge Center. For example, there's developerWorks articles, tech docs and notes, and Redbooks. If you want to search all of these sources, just use the search field on the www.ibm.com site. I know it's hard to see, being black on black, but here's what it looks like, in the upper right-hand corner of the webpage:

I'm sure you are all familiar with the IBM Knowledge Center, which has the information for Informix versions 11.5, 11.7, and 12.1. But maybe you are used to seeing the old version 10.0 information center show up in search results.

The Informix information centers for version 10.0, 11.1, and older products have been taken down.

You can still access the documentation, however! There are web pages that link to PDFs or .zip files:

MongoDB API command: Run the ensureIndex command and specify text as the type of index, and then query with the MongoDB$text query operator. This method is appropriate if you don't want to change your existing MongoDB application, but provides limited options for indexing and querying.

Informix extension to the MongoDB API: Run the createTextIndex command through the MongoDB API and then query with the Informix$ifxtext query operator. The createTextIndex command takes the same parameters as creating a basic text search index through SQL statements. This method is appropriate if you want to use MongoDB commands and also take advantage of the flexibility and power of Informix basic text search indexing and querying.

Informix SQL statement: Create a basic text search index with JSON index parameters through SQL statements and query with the bts_contains() search predicate. This method is appropriate if you want to query JSON documents through SQL.

When you create a basic text search index on JSON documents, you can control the following aspects of the index:

Whether to index the documents as field name-value pairs so that you can search for text by field. Enable the all_json_names index parameter to index all field names. Set the json_names index parameters to index specific field names. You have the following choices to further refine how field name-value pairs are indexed:

Whether to include JSON or BSON object paths in field name-value pairs so that you can search based on the field hierarchy in the document. Enable the json_path_processing index parameter to index paths.

Whether to index the position of values in arrays so that you can search specific positions in arrays. Enable the json_array_processing index parameter to index the position of arrays.

Whether to index as both field name-value pairs and unstructured text so that you have the flexibility to search a specific field or all fields. Enable the include_contents index parameter to include an unstructured index of field names and values.

Whether an unstructured index contains only values and no field names so that you do not receive field names in search results. Enable the only_json_values index parameter to limit the unstructured index to values.

I've been hearing a lot about IoT architecture recently, and Shaspa's story really illustrates how Informix fits in. Briefly, a 4-tier IoT architecture has these components:

1. Sensors

2. Gateway devices that collect sensor data. For example, one gateway device in each smart house. Informix is here!

3. Cloud or other centralized storage for data from gateways. Informix is here!

4. Business intelligence software

Shaspa implemented a "smart building" solution with Informix embedded in the gateway device that collects sensor data in each building. They also use Informix to store the data from all the buildings. Read about it here.